


Sweet Talk

by justanotherStonyfan



Series: Honey Honey [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Domestic, M/M, Mentions of FWB, Mentions of het, Modern Bucky Barnes, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Shrunkyclunks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 16:10:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13838346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherStonyfan/pseuds/justanotherStonyfan
Summary: James rolls his head on the cushion and looks at Steve.“You had plans?” he says, and Steve shrugs, flips the dishcloth over his shoulder and comes across the room to perch on the arm of the nearest armchair so he can talk to James at about eye level.“I do,” he says, and this has been nice, it's been so nice. “You and I need to speak to each other. Y'know - irrational adult to irrational adult.”James searches his face with his eyes, and seems to deflate a little.“Sure,” he says.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm already aware that Steve's Protestant in MCU canon (for those who haven't seen it addressed, it says so on the CAtFA prop dog tags). There are plenty of reasons I feel Catholicism would fit him better as far as writing his character goes – not least the guilt, and the culture shock of the change of prayer/language in the Catholic church, plus the ability to use plenty of garish religious symbols if I want to (whereas the Protestant faith subscribes to plainer décor, both as a show of reverence and to limit distraction. But that would mean I wouldn't be able to explore all the Steve-sads by having him look up at a giant crucifix and think bible-y things with a wistful numinosity). 
> 
> It's a personal headcanon, it may or may not be relevant later on in this 'verse, and it may or may not show up in other fics. Just a heads up.
> 
> Also, Steve is going to point out to James (probably several times) that he can afford the things he's giving James. I've seen posts going around about back-pay, and went looking for confirmation I could link. If Steve was given his back pay according to this article and invested wisely (as he might if his best friend were one of the richest guys in the world,) as well as being in one of the world's most dangerous jobs, then a booty-call with an amazon wishlist would absolutely be no skin off his bank account's nose.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We could go out – I need to eat a lot but there are some nice places. And you haven't been out since I kidnapped you on Friday.”
> 
> “Is that what this is?” James says. “Stockholm syndrome?”

James wakes on Sunday to another stranger only, this time, it takes him a few more seconds. Rogers looks completely different – so different that, even knowing the beard thing, James has to squint and really try and make sense of what he's seeing.

Rogers looks like he's going somewhere important, and somewhere semi-formal. James squints at his phone where it's sitting on the faux-wood induction pad, and finds that he's slept through his alarm and it's getting on for half-past eleven in the morning which...isn't terrible. Especially not when he gets to see Rogers like this. 

He's still gorgeous, but in a totally different way. It looks almost...accidental.

Rogers is wearing a circle beard and has slicked all his hair back with, probably, gel, and it changes not only the color of the hair on his head but also the shape of his head and the shape of his face. He's wearing a charcoal colored button down and charcoal suit pants. His shoes are brown suede, which he's hooked his fingers inside the heels of, carrying them around with a gray marl scarf draped over his wrist and a long, gray overcoat draped over his forearm.

With his other hand, he opens the closet door and goes inside.

When he comes back empty-handed, James realizes he must actually be coming _back_ from somewhere, but he forgets most of his curiosity in favor of watching Rogers very carefully. Once he steps out of the closet, his shirt is open a few more buttons, and James chews his lower lip as Rogers starts on his cuffs, feels himself smiling as Rogers walks over to the side of the bed he's lying on, and glances up at him. And then Rogers is double-taking when he sees James is awake, abandoning his cuff.

His smile is blinding, and the implication of that leaves James a little breathless.

“Good morning,” Rogers says, as though he's both surprised and pleased to find James in his bed. 

“Hi,” James says, pulls himself up so he can sit up and look at Rogers. “Don't kiss me, I haven't brushed my teeth.”

Rogers gives him a funny look but cranes his neck as he sits down, pressing his lips to James' forehead instead.

“What a travesty,” he says. “How did you sleep?”

“Good,” James answers, grinning. “What's this look all about?”

Rogers is still smiling but there's something calculating about his expression – he's definitely considering whether or not to answer. 

“Church,” he says, and James feels his eyebrows raise. “Congregation knows who I am, but I'm less likely to drag the paparazzi into mass with me if I look like this.”

He's evidently waiting for a reaction, and James isn't sure what to say. He's not concerned, as Rogers seems to think he might be.

“Catholic or Protestant?” he asks eventually.

Rogers' expression softens just a little. 

“Catholic,” he answers, “ish,” and James nods in acknowledgement.

Rogers turns to look over his shoulder, towards the en-suite.

“I'm going to shower,” he says, “alone unfortunately, but I'll never get the coffee started if you get in with me. Need the bathroom before I use it? I won't be long but...”

“Nah, I'm good,” James says. “Is the beard staying?”

Rogers shakes his head, looks back at James.

“Wouldn't be much of a disguise if I wore it everywhere, now, would it?” he says, but he's smiling. “Think about what you want for breakfast. Whether you want to go out or stay in.”

He kisses James' head again when he stands, and resumes fiddling with his cuff.

James just watches him walk into the en-suite. He knows what they say and it definitely applies.

_Hate to see you go..._

~

Rogers takes maybe ten minutes in the shower, and then emerges in a white towel and nothing else besides his ever-present tags, and James gets hard so fast he tents the sheets.

Rogers looks over and smiles – doesn't smirk, it's not enough of a leer to be a smirk, but he shakes his head. 

“Go on,” he says, “go shower. The new bottles are for you, didn't know if you'd wanna keep on using my old things. And that bathrobe's yours as well so you might as well put it on after.”

James just hugs his knees and doesn't even pretend to hide the fact that he's ogling Rogers.

“If I tell you I want to stay in for breakfast,” he says, “can we have dessert?”

Rogers' gaze flicks up and James feels pinned immediately.

“We'll see,” he says. “Shower first, then come find me. Sound good?”

James does what is probably the bravest thing he's even done in his life. In broad daylight, in front of Steve Rogers, he gets out of bed with not a stitch on and walks to the en-suite with the type of strut he only manages because he's learned to fake the confidence he doesn't feel.

“Sure you don't wanna join me?” James asks and he's not blind, he can already see the answer in the slight change in the shape of Rogers' towel. 

“Not at all,” he says. “I'd _love_ to join you. But you're gonna take a shower and then we're gonna figure out what we're doing today.”

James slows down, sets a hand on the doorframe and looks back over his shoulder.

“I have a suggest-”

“You-!” Rogers says, laughing as he makes to goose James – he's nowhere near but James laughs and hops to it anyway.

James uses the new bottles because they've been bought for him, doesn't take as long as he'd like to because it's wasting time, and he doesn't even jerk off. He tries not to think of it as saving himself for Steve but that's what he's doing. If it's a choice between Rogers or himself, he knows which option he's going to pick.

The gray bathrobe is even nicer than it looks, soft and plush and thick, and James runs his hands over it a few times, it feels so good. He looks at himself in the mirror too, brushes his teeth and checks his jaw. Eh, he could shave.

Rogers' electric shaver sits on a shelf but, plugged in, there's another one sitting by the sink. It's clearly unused and James debates not using it but, the thing is, if it's meant for James to use, then that's probably because Rogers doesn't want James using his. He'll mention it anyway, and then if wasn't meant for his use, he'll sort out a new one or something.

When he's finished shaving, he remembers that getting dressed isn't an option. He's not sure if his clothes are back in the apartment, actually, but it doesn't matter – Rogers says he has plans. So Rogers must have planned.

When James goes into the main rooms, Rogers is sitting at the table and has redressed. This shirt is a light blue, and he wears dark jeans. He gestures for James to sit down and James takes a seat, a little self-conscious in the bathrobe.

“Gray's your color after all?” Rogers says, and James smiles a little.

“Evidently,” he says. “I used the shaver by the sink.”

Rogers nods.

“Good,” he says. “Now about breakfast.”

James sucks his lower lip between his teeth and thinks about it.

“Haven't you eaten already?” he asks.

“Usually yes,” Rogers answers. “But not on a Sunday.”

“Wow, you really stick to it, don't you, Rogers?”

Rogers cocks his head.

“We could go out – I need to eat a lot but there are some nice places. And you haven't been out since I kidnapped you on Friday.”

“Is that what this is?” James says. “Stockholm syndrome?”

Rogers smiles a little but he reaches out over the table a moment later, hand out. It takes James a second to realize that Rogers wants to take his hand, and so he holds it out so Rogers' huge fingers can envelop his own.

“We _could_ go out. But, before I take you anywhere,” he says, “I want to know that you'd be comfortable going around outside with me. I'm out, I couldn't care less what the gossip rags think, but you...”

“It's fine,” James says, and Rogers squeezes his fingers. 

“But I want you to think about it for a little while. Who you work for, where you live, friends and family. People see you with me and, at the very least, they want to know who you are, you understand?”

James nods slowly.

“It's a big ask,” Rogers continues. “Which is why I want you to think about it.”

James looks at him, finds himself thinking about every headline he's ever seen that pertains to Rogers. 

There have been a lot. What's he wearing, who's he dating, where's he eating, does he like the new cultural-phenomenon tv show, has he heard of this singer, who's his best friend, who's his therapist, who's his andrologist.

James...

He's not sure he can deal with that, actually. Even if all he ends up being is a breakfast companion, people will want to know who he is. And Rogers has had an awful lot of time on the front of magazines, has dealt with an awful lot of public scrutiny. 

Not just the regular gossip stuff, but the intense public-meltdown crap. Even though he didn't _have_ a public meltdown, his apparent meltdown was treated as public property. Speculation ran rife, people photoshopped photos, and eventually Rogers went on talk shows to clear it up. It wasn't until Stark brought out the big guns (lawyers) that everybody backed off. And that might have been a turning point for celebrities in the public eye – there's even a Wikipedia page about it, the Park Avenue Clause or something, James forgets. But there are still paparazzi and magazines that pay for the photos they take. 

And does James want to be on the front of a magazine with Steve Rogers? 

Ehh.

Not if they're speculating about who he is and what relationship he has with Rogers before it's even clear to James himself.

“I...”

Steve smiles, a warm, secretive thing.

“Not today, right?” he says.

“Yeah,” James breathes. “I mean, I...you know. My- My sister would kill me probably.”

Steve laughs softly.

“All right then,” he says. “Your clothes are on the way up but I've got some other things you can get into for now. We're gonna make something for breakfast and then I might order something up as well.”

“I thought you said you didn't have food in,” James says, and Rogers shrugs.

“Well, I'm also a supersoldier and there's a store on the way back from church so,” he holds out a hand, “I have food now.”

He stands up and is already on his way to the door when someone knocks. When he opens the door, a man James doesn't know is standing there with a plastic cube or something. It's obviously a cover from whatever dry-cleaning service the tower has.

“Thanks, Dion,” he says, and James thinks he gives a tip, but he's not sure.

Who's he kidding – it's Steve Rogers, he'd probably give the guy a house if he could.

“I,” he says as he turns around, “am feeling something continental this morning,” and then he glances at the analogue clock on the wall. 

It's octagonal, with an oak frame, Roman numerals, and a second-hand.

“This afternoon,” he amends.

Rogers doesn't seem like the type to have brunch usually. He seems like the type to have breakfast at like five in the morning, and lunch at like one in the afternoon, every day, working or not.

“Did you go running this morning?”

“Yeah,” Rogers says, crossing to the kitchen to start pulling things out of cupboards and the refrigerator. “You have anything against pastries and that kinda stuff?”

“I like pastries,” James says and, feeling bold, he gets up and goes to stand behind Rogers, slides his arms around Rogers' waist.

“Good,” he says.

Rogers slows to a nice, sedate pace so he's not dragging James around the kitchen, and continues preparing the meal with James shuffling around behind him.

Rogers smells really good.

“What's your aftershave?” James asks his spine, warm under the soft cotton of his shirt.

“I dunno,” Rogers answers. “Something something cedar something – you like it?”

“I was wondering about maybe getting a bottle to spray on my pillows,” he says, and Rogers laughs.

“What a nice, non-creepy thing to say,” he mutters, and James snickers. “We'll see about it, kid, maybe I can get a bottle of yours, too.”

“We'll see about it, old man,” James parrots, smiling against Rogers' shoulderblade a moment later.

He's got a beautiful laugh.

~

This, this is, Steve can't even begin to describe how nice this is. They're still not addressing the elephant in the room, but it's not as though this isn't a prime example of a weekend out of life. If this is all he gets, this is all he gets, and he will live with it if he has to.

But given that it's three nights and two days, he really doesn't want to make it awkward until he absolutely has to, and he doesn't have to yet. 

James lets go after a couple of minutes to start helping, humming to himself. Steve recognises it anyway.

“You're too young for _Top Gun_ , aren't you?” he says, but James shrugs, starts 'singing' Take My Breath Away.

“ _Bow-bow-bow-bow-bow -ching every motion in my foolish love_....no?” Steve raises an eyebrow. “Hey, classics never age,” James says.

“I beg to differ,” Steve says flatly, and James pauses to look at him.

“You're already a classic, so your argument is biased.”

Steve tries not to let that give him pause. He knows there's a lot of years between them but...it's strange. It used to be difficult, hearing about it. Tony would call him Grandpa and Clint would call him Old Man and, for a while, every time somebody said it, it was all Steve could think about. Hey old-timer, are the kids on your lawn, how's the shuffleboard court, and the rest. 

It was Natasha who turned it around, really. He'd been beginning to spiral even then, losing himself day by day, but then she'd stuck her nose in. She'd bought him a Life Alert emergency pendant and a metal Medical ID bracelet, and he'd been so pissed he could barely breathe until he realized that the second-hand life alert pendant couldn't do a damn thing without the adjoining emergency system, and the bracelet read “SELF-PRESERVATION DEFICIENCY.”

He'd looked at her, waited.

“I don't call you Old Man to make you remember,” she'd said. “I call you Old Man because I want you to know that I haven't forgotten.”

Things were different between them after that, and she - and Clint - had done so much to include him, to make him feel less isolated.

Still, he supposes he is old these days – at least to a kid like James.

“When did _you_ watch _Top Gun_?” James says, and Steve shrugs.

“Same time I watched most of the other stuff. Star Wars, Back to the Future, the Goonies, all of that,” he answers. “They put me on a bunch of different orientation courses when they found me, and then everybody I knew started telling me things I had to see, stuff I needed to hear, you know. Like that one friend who does everything before you, except it was everyone, and all it did was remind me how long I'd been gone.”

“That sounds,” James says. “Shit.”

“Yep,” Steve nods. “Jarvis, may I have Sunday Morning, please?”

 _“Certainly, sir,”_ Jarvis answers, and music starts up, quietly enough that it's not going to disrupt their conversation.

“Thank you.”

“Is this _Motown?_ ” James asks, and Steve doesn't even pause in what he's doing, preparing the counter to be used while James gets out a couple of glasses.

“You can blame the Falcon,” he says. “Not everybody's suggestions were terrible. But I developed my own tastes and started knowing what people were talking about, and people didn't do it as much once I started explaining quotes to them first. You know. Someone'd say 'I'm your father' and look at me to explain it and I'd just...'Anakin Skywalker, I know.' And I guess that meant the novelty wore off.”

James doesn't say anything as Steve goes to grab a couple things from the refrigerator, doesn't say anything when he comes back with a bottle of Asti and a carton of fresh-pressed apple juice, either, and Steve only figures there's something wrong when he looks up and James looks kind of ill, arms crossed over his chest.

“What's wrong?” he says, immediately concerned, and James just shakes his head.

“People were real dicks to you, huh?” he says, and Steve finds himself warmed by it.

“It wasn't on purpose,” he says, reaching out to cup James' elbow in the palm of his hand, tugging him forward to kiss his forehead because James is right there and he can if he wants. “They were trying to help. You gotta remember, there'd never been a problem like me before.”

James searches his face for moment but nods eventually, and Steve lets go to start pouring the drinks. He pours apple juice into both the stemmed glasses and then he reaches for the wine.

“What even is that?” James asks as Steve gets a good grip on the Asti.

“This?” he says, indicating the bottle, but James shakes his head.

“I mean, why are you putting it in apple juice?”

Steve smiles and aims the cork at the couch as he opens the bottle.

“Because,” he says, pouring a little into both glasses of apple juice, “I saw the face you made when I fed you mimosas yesterday.” He stops pouring. “Unless you don't like this either.”

James goes a little pink over the bridge of his nose.

“Oh,” he says. “No, it's okay.”

Steve nods, resumes topping up the glasses.

“Hey, relax,” Steve tells him, and he sets the bottle down on the table and starts gathering different foods together. “You don't like something, we find you something new. Wanna get me a couple dinner plates?” he says. “Over the toaster oven.”

“Sure,” James says, and crosses over, opens the cupboard. “How many?”

Steve smiles to himself as he makes a mental inventory. The sex is nice but this part's nice too – spending time with each other, around each other. He really has missed proximity, has missed contact and presence sharing and the comfort of knowing that somebody else is around.

“Four for the table, one each plus a side-plate for you and me.”

James nods, picks up the respective crockery, and Steve busies himself with decanters and ramekins, starts setting them out on the counter.

He puts some eggs on to boil, too, and starts on a little bacon in a frying pan.

“I eat like a garbage truck,” Steve tells him. “You take what you want, I take the rest all in one go.”

James laughs.

Steve starts getting the spreads out of the refrigerator, grabs a chopping board while he thinks about it, and then he says,

“You wanna come open these packages?”

James does – pastries and lunch meats and packaged cheese and whatnot – and Steve keeps one eye on the eggs.

When they're nearly done, he shoves a couple of slices of bread into the toaster and fishes the toast rack out of the back of the utensils cupboard over by the refrigerator.

“Just put 'em out on the plates,” he says, of literally everything, when James has opened all the packages and looks at him expectantly.

James nods and sets about it, and so Steve grabs the corn flakes and puts them over on the table, before he comes back to start on the fruit salad. Apples, strawberries, grapes, and, by the time he's got a bowl of chopped fruit, James is mostly finished, too.

By the time Steve's decanted the apple juice into a jug, the toast is done.

“Nice,” he says, and then, “ah, oh,” because it's hot, and James snickers. “Yeah, okay, thank you,” he says, with his Authoritarian Voice to counteract the ridiculous hopping about of trying to hold hot toast, and James still snickers.

Steve puts the salt and pepper out, puts some of the different compotes into ramekins, each with their own teaspoon, sets up the cafetière and starts looking around.

“I forget anything?” he says.

“Eggs?” James says, and Steve remembers the eggs.

“Oh!” 

He hopes James likes hard-boiled.

“All right,” he says, “you go sit down, I'll be there in a sec.”

And James does, taking a seat at the table.

Steve grabs a couple of bowls and spoons for the cereal and sets them out, hands James a napkin with an absolutely unnecessary flourish, and puts the eggs in a bowl lined with another napkin. He grabs a couple more things, makes sure everything he can think of is down, and then says,

“That everything?”

James looks at the table and then back into the kitchen.

“Kitchen sink's still over there,” he says, and Steve waves his own napkin over James' head in a pretend cuff.

They haven't done badly, really.

There's toast, butter, compotes, cereal and milk, coffee and sugar, plates of meat and cheese, plus bread, croissants and danishes, as well as the fruit salad. And the eggs, too.

Steve sits down as well – he can't think of anything he's missed, and the kitchen's like two feet away even if he remembers something.

He starts on grace, silently, but finds when he lifts his head that James is crossing himself too. He doesn't say anything about it but it's nice to not be the only one praying at the table for once.

“Tuck in,” he says, and James looks at him, mildly surprised. “I got that one from the Brits,” he says, and tries not to pay too much attention to the pang that follows. “Sometimes I get a hankerin' for tea, that's how bad it is.”

“Golly,” James answers, and Steve prods James' shin with his toe.

James startles quite hard, and then he laughs.

“I like you,” he says, wrinkling his nose as he grins, and Steve smiles back. 

“I'm not the uptight asshole from the papers, huh?” he says, and James gets himself a cup of coffee.

“No, but I mean, you have a sense of humor and a life. You know? You're a guy.”

Steve regards him for a moment or two.

“Maybe I'll hire you for my PR team,” he says. 

“You have a PR team?” James asks.

“Will if I hire you,” Steve answers, and James snorts.

They start with eggs and bacon, because the eggs, the bacon and the toast are all warm, and then James has cereal, a tablespoon of the fruit salad, and chooses a couple of croissants to have with salami and cheese on the first and fruit compote on the second.

As James eats, Steve checks he's had enough of each dish, and then consumes most of what remains when James confirms. That way, they both eat their fill. 

James looks like he's regretting that last croissant (or possibly slightly more than that) so Steve takes pity on him and sends him over to the couch.

“Try the recliner out,” he says, 'cause stretching out might go a little way to easing James' potential stomachache.

And James goes, startling a little when he sorts the recliner out and it goes backwards. Steve tries not to chuckle.

The washing up doesn't take long – most of it can go in the dishwasher – and Steve's playlist is winding up by the time he's drying his hands.

“Thanks for the music, Jarvis,” he says quietly, and Jarvis ends the queue instead of replaying it.

James rolls his head on the cushion and looks at Steve.

“You had plans?” he says, and Steve shrugs, flips the dishcloth over his shoulder and comes across the room to perch on the arm of the nearest armchair so he can talk to James at about eye level.

“I do,” he says, and this has been nice, it's been so nice. “You and I need to speak to each other. Y'know - irrational adult to irrational adult.”

James searches his face with his eyes, and seems to deflate a little.

“Sure,” he says, sounding anything but, and Steve shakes his head.

“It's nothing to worry about,” he says, hoping it's true. “We just need to be clear before we go any further. All right?”

~

James draws a lungful of air in and braces himself. Right, of course. Here are Rogers' conditions. Well, maybe they'll be okay. Maybe they'll be reasonable. And if not, this was a nice way to spend a night or two.

“First,” Steve says, “I don't want you to feel obligated to give me any particular answers. Okay? If you just tell me what you think I want to hear, that doesn't help either of us, and I'm really enjoying my weekend so far.”

James nods.

“Yeah, me too,” he says, but he doesn't feel as comfortable in his own skin as he did at breakfast, feels way more aware of the fact that he's only wearing a dressing gown.

“Good,” Rogers says. “So is there anything you want to ask me?”

And James blinks. There is a lot he wants to ask – of course there is, he's talking to Steve Rogers. But none of it is appropriate in the context of this conversation, none of it will be anything like the sort of things he ought to ask.

“Uh,” James says, after a very long time.

Rogers waits a fairly long time after this, too, but James doesn't get anything else out.

“All right,” he says softly, eventually. “Healthwise, I can't contract or carry STDs. They get neutralized by the serum in the space of about four hours. So I'm clean. And while I'm sure you're clean, and while I shouldn't have assumed, that means that if you'd had anything, it wouldn't matter.”

“I'm clean,” James says, and tries not to feel embarrassed about it, tries not to consider just how stupid it was not to have asked in the first place.

“Thank you for telling me,” Rogers says, absolutely sincerely, as though confirming something of no consequence to Rogers is somehow the disclosure of a heartfelt secret. “I haven't slept with anyone except you since I met you, and my last sexual activity before you that wasn't alone was with a friend, maybe a month and a half before I met you.”

“Uh,” James says again.

“It's all right,” Rogers tells him. “I don't need to know yours, I'm immune.”

Actually, it's more the 'with a friend' part – Steve Rogers has friends with benefits? He'll ask about it later. And the subtle 'alone' part that James will be picturing for-maybe-like- _ever._

“Yeah,” James says instead, “but I didn't sleep with anybody else after I met you, either.”

This appears to give Rogers pause, and he looks James over, smile a little as he nods.

“Thank you for telling me,” he says again. “I have questions, of course I do. But something I learned the hard way was not to put things off,” and in the split second between one breath and the next, James manages to hear and comprehend what he's just been told and is surprised to find that it hurts. It makes his chest ache to think that, not only has Rogers been through so much, he's also been dealing with it for so long that he mentions it almost casually. He continues, “so I'm gonna ask you pure and simple. What are you looking for, James?” 

Before he even thinks about it, his mouth drops open, ready to provide the automatic answer.

_Whatever you're willing to give me._

This is Steve Rogers, former, original, Captain America, Commander Rogers of the Avengers, veteran, superhero, icon. But for some reason, it feels like that would be exactly the wrong thing to say.

“I...” he says, but doesn't get any further than that in the ten seconds that follow.

Rogers nods.

“Okay,” he answers. “I'll start. I am quite happy to proceed however you'd like.”

And...wow, no, that wasn't what James thought was going to happen.

“If you'd like to see me again, and you'd like a casual thing whenever we both have free time, I can do that. We can probably overlap some evenings and weekends that we're both free. I have public appearance commitments and, obviously, the duty roster means there are some things I positively can't manage. I wouldn't want to be in the middle of a busy evening with you if the Assemble alarm went off, for example. Might make getting into uniform a little difficult.”

James can't even laugh at the joke – Rogers wants to see him again? _Semi-regularly?_

“If you want to do this a little more professionally, draw up a contract and we do it that way, that's fine. I can afford an arrangement like that, we just need to talk about your terms. If you'd like to try for something a little more long-term-”

“Oh my god,” James says, as what he's just been told hits home, “you _were_ buying me off!”

Rogers looks unimpressed. 

“Hey now, I'd've bought anybody a drink and a meal,” he says. 

“You were trying- _You_ want to be _my_ Sugar Daddy!?” James says, and Rogers lifts his head, leans back as though he's being accused of something unpleasant.

“Okay, now hang on a second-”

“You were trying to buy me with _pizza_?” James says, and he's aware even as he says it that they've already been over that part. “You thought-”

“Well, I mean, you haven't even really called me by my first name,” Rogers says, in a completely different tone than the one he was using before, and James shuts his mouth with a click. “I thought maybe you were keeping it formal on purpose, and you didn't answer my question when I asked outright.”

James stares a few moments longer, and then closes his eyes. Is he capable of being around Rogers and not putting his foot in his mouth? He puts his hand on his face instead.

“Oh my god,” he says. “Did you seriously think-”

“No,” Rogers answers, staring right at him. “Honestly, I thought it'd be a one time thing we could both enjoy but I changed my mind, so I gave you my number.” 

James drops his hand.

“But then I didn't call,” he says and yeah.

Okay.

Wow he feels like a dick.

When he looks at Rogers- At Steve. When he looks at Steve, Steve is watching him with that same half-tired, half-sad face on and James gets it all at once. That's what ruefulness looks like on Steve Rogers.

“I'm sorry,” James says.

“It's all right,” Steve says, less defensively than the other stuff, more sort of the tone he was using before. “It's not like I couldn't have found you, too. I was just as weird about contacting you,” which isn't necessarily true. If he'd turned Steve down and Steve had come looking, that would be a brand new, much creepier, kettle of fish, but it's nice of him to suggest they're equally to blame. “ And if you want a, a sugar daddy, I can do that. I'd be happy with that, you know? I can afford it. _Is_ that what you want?”

James snorts, shakes his head and looks up at the ceiling. How is this his life?

“It's a really nice idea,” James says. “For somebody to pay off my college debt and my rent and get me those nice designer jeans and everything _but_ ,” he looks back at Steve. “No. I'm not looking for a sugar daddy.”

Rogers, Steve, he frowns a little bit.

“Are you sure, now? 'Cause I had a whole thing ready about knowing your own wants and desires and free speech and human rights et cetera. You don't wanna change your mind?”

“Can I change my mind long enough for a Mercedes?” James says, pretending to be serious, and Steve smiles. “Wow, you'd really have done it, huh?”

Steve shrugs.

“If that's what you'd wanted.”

There's silence for a few seconds, and than James decides the only way to know for sure is by asking.

“So...are you looking for a booty call?” James says hopefully because, he's got to admit, that would be really nice. “Another friend with benefits?”

“Uh, I'm...looking for a partner, actually,” he says. “Although if you're-”

“Wow,” James says and, oh okay, that was loud and sudden but that answer is a lot less likely to be real. “Sorry. Uh. Oh my God, really?”

“If you'd like to, of course,” Steve says, and James- 

That's-

Wow.

“I,” James says. His brain isn't working. “I'm twenty-one.”

“I know,” Steve tells him. “And I can respect that you have a lot of years ahead of you. I wasn't thinking about a permanent relationship at twenty-one and I'm not expecting you to white-picket-fence me when you've got a whole life to live, but I said to you before, if there's anything that I've learned in a hundred and eight years, it's that it's best to say what you mean, and to do it while you've got the chance.”

James doesn't really know what to say. 

“I'm not asking for your hand in marriage,” Steve clarifies. “I'd like to know if you'll date me until you feel like dating someone else.”

James closes his eyes for a long few moments, finds himself blinking rapidly when he opens them.

“That's,” he says, _a lot to take in_ he does not.

Steve stands up, heads over to the kitchen.

“Think about it,” he says. “That's all I'll ask for the time being. And we've had a nice couple of days, there's no reason we can't-”

“Absolutely!” James says. “Are you kidding? You're Steve Rogers! Oh my God Steve Rogers asked me to be his boyfriend. That's what happened, right?”

Steve turns around and leans on the counter, and amused smile turning his lips up at one corner.

“I believe those were my intentions,” he says. “But I also meant what I said. There's a lot you need to consider before you date me.”

“Yeah, the sex might be terrible,” James says, thoroughly derailing Steve by the look of it, and he's laughing at the expression Steve's pulled by the time he says, “sorry,” probably less than convincingly. 

“James,” Steve sighs, and he pinches the bridge of his nose, but he's also smiling.

Eventually, when James has wound down a little – which he blames entirely on the tension of going into a We-Need-To-Talk-talk unprepared – Steve tries again.

“You gotta know a couple things before we get any further,” he says, “and we gotta start with work. I don't know if I'm allowed to date you according to your contracts, so let _me_ handle Stark. But I also need you to know that work has to come first. If dating me will get you fired then there'd no contest. I can jut wait six months until you're running your own department and see what happens then. But the Avengers are a Strategic Response Unit, you know? Emergency services, and I'm lucky. I work with my friends and we're all flexible, so if we can put our friends or our families first, we do. Nobody's gonna....I don't know, haul Hope away from Scott's bedside if we can - uh, that's, Wasp and Antman – if we can help it, for example. But if we need all hands on deck, we need all hands on deck.”

“I understand,” James says, and Rogers cocks his head.

“Okay,” he says. “But I want you to know that _I_ know theory is different from the practical. See how you feel after the first couple times you've seen me fall off a building on the news or we've had to cut short a quiet evening, okay? I don't want to be pessimistic but...”

“I understand,” James says again. 

“And what I said before about the paparazzi still stands. They know I'm out, but are you?”

James shrugs.

“To everyone who matters,” he says, and Steve nods.

“Which is fine,” he says, “but as soon as we confirm we're dating, everyone who _doesn't_ matter will know too, including zany family and jealous coworkers. And, I mean, this is if you want to confirm we're dating to anybody. You could be my live-in kept-boy instead.”

James considers that because he can't not – that kind of imagery is very difficult to ignore. He doesn't think, even if he agreed to being a live-in kept-boy, that Steve would keep him naked and on his knees, and bathe him and hand-feed him, and get him off every hour or so with the strength and care he seems to be all about, but it's a very nice idea for a lazy afternoon some time in the future.

“Well it's something to think about,” James says, and if he sounds a little strangled, it's because he's picturing himself on a cushion between Steve's legs with his hands behind his back and a collar around his neck. “I mean, do you...”

And then he realizes two things at once – first, that he was literally about to ask if Steve likes roleplay and, second, that he already spoke, which means it's too late to not-speak.

“Yeah?” Steve says, and James can feel himself flushing bright red.

“Uh, I was gonna ask a sex thing,” he says, hoping he can get out of it.

“Hmm, that's a conversation we'll have,” Steve answers, “but not now. Can you give me your number?”

James nods. 

“Uhh, sure, yeah, I....do you have a phone or...paper or something?”

“Don't need it,” Steve says, “just tell me,” and right, super soldier. 

So James rattles it off and Steve repeats it back, and then he makes a cup of coffee while James sits and waits for his head to stop spinning.

Steve has, somehow, figured out how he likes his coffee through careful observation instead of asking, and he hands a mug to James as he comes to sit beside him on one of the couch's non-reclining seats.

“There's stuff I can't tell you,” Steve says, “clearance-wise. Which I'm sure you know.”

James nods.

“Mm,” he says into his mug. “I think there's stuff I can't tell you, too.”

James looks him up and down and finds, when his gaze reaches Steve's eyes, that Steve is just looking at his face and smiling.

“Do you have any questions?” he says softly.

And James thinks about it again, with the distinct advantage that his brain is actually working this time. 

“I,” he says, and then he licks his lips, “was just wondering a couple...you know, things. About the stuff you said.”

“Good, start with specifics,” Steve says wryly, and James rolls his eyes.

“Shut up,” he says, regrets it immediately, but Steve's still smiling. “I just wondered about...like...you, you've got friends with benefits with somebody.”

“I did,” Steve answers. “I don't if we're dating.”

“So we're monogamous?” James clarifies, and Rogers tilts his head.

“I would like to be.”

James nods.

“I can do that,” he says – if it had ever been an issue to start with, it sure as hell wouldn't be one with Steve Rogers. “But I meant like...I mean, who is he?”

Steve sucks his teeth to keep from grinning – James can see his whole face getting in on the effort.

“They,” he says, and James can't even begin to hide his shock. “And if I told you...”

James looks at him flatly.

“Oh you'd have to kill me?”

“Pretty sure they'd kill you for me,” Steve answers. “And I can assure you, that's the last thing I'd want. I will need to tell them I'm seeing someone, although I won't tell them that someone is you for the time being. Otherwise they'll assume I'm just ignoring them out of self-pity or something and come barging in with takeout and bad movies.”

Steve leans forward at this point, and James moves his coffee enough that they can kiss, briefly.

“I would recommend that you mention to close family that you're seeing somebody well-known, but I'd advise you against telling them it's me at this point. I'm sure they can keep a secret but we barely know each other. We've both got no idea whether this will last in the long-term.”

Which is a little disappointing to hear out loud but is a valid thought.

“Which actually,” Steve says, “brings me to my next point. I can afford a sugar baby even though neither of us are looking for that. So call me a child of the Depression or too close a friend of Tony Stark, but I'm gonna wanna spoil the hell outta you anyway. And if we don't work out, I'm not going to want anything back,”

“Steve,” James says, but Steve holds up a hand. 

“I'm bad at emotions,” he says. “Let me be good at giving. All right? I only have two conditions in any relationship and that's that you don't lie to me on purpose, and that you tell me if there's anything bugging you. No matter how small, no matter how dumb. You got a problem, you let me know, if you can, all right?”

James nods.

“Right.” And that, conveniently enough, brings James to his next point, too. “Can I ask you about yesterday?” he says. “When I said that thing about who hurt you?”

For a moment, nothing happens, and then he sees Steve close up. Its a remarkable thing – he might not have thought it possible if he hadn't seen it himself – but suddenly there's something between them. Captain America's iron will, perhaps, or the Commander's single-minded determination. Great in a fight and really not great in a conversation – it's not scary. Steve's eyes don't go dark, he doesn't look suddenly angry. It's just that James is very aware that he's not going to get an answer out of Steve today.

“Just an ex,” he says instead. “It's nothing bad, it was just difficult to admit we were wrong after so long. Although I'd like to wait a little while before you and I talk about that in great detail, if that's all right by you.”

James nods.

“Sure,” he says. “I mean, it's...yeah, but I just...wanted to say you can...you don't have to...y'know. We can go slow, I wouldn't mind.”

Steve nods.

“Step at a time, sure,” and then he draws a deep breath. “So, I mean...Do you want to start again next Friday? You can come here and I'll make a nice meal for you and we'll do something romantic, if you want. Actually try dating instead of just me picking you up for a quick fuck.”

James tries not to choke on his coffee – he's not sure he's heard Rogers use that in a sentence outside a sexual encounter so far.

“And then I thought we could talk about actually having sex. Because, don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying this. But my libido's an animal and I'm not as good as I should be at ignoring it. If there's something I know you want, I can be a little more geared towards that.”

James nods, swallows hard and tries not to think of every single piece of fetish porn he's ever seen, of every outfit and instrument, of literally every sex toy website and Steve's hand – which is very big and very warm, smooths up his thigh with absolutely no warning.

James gets his coffee up his nose and Steve laughs, takes the mug from him.

“I'm sorry,” he says, but he's still laughing, and James sits forward to cough. 

Steve rubs his back because getting slapped by a supersoldier probably wouldn't do James any favors at this point and, when he's done, James slumps, out of breath, back into his seat.

Steve edges closer, so that he's sort of looking down at James, propping his head up with one hand with the other on James' knee again.

“Is there anything you like?”

“There's stuff I wanna try,” he says. “Like, I mean there's, I mean, I've seen some...stuff I wanna try. I mean, are you like stone vanilla?”

Steve's eyes change as James looks at them, and _now_ they're darker.

“I'm not a stone anything,” he says and wow, okay, the implication of _that_...

Steve looks like a top, of course he does. But James sometimes forgets – as, apparently, does the rest of the world – that he wasn't always this way. And that looks can be deceiving and desires are fluid. 

“You like whips and chains and that kind of thing?” he goes on to ask, and James bites his lip, tries to think about something that'll stop his cock poking out of the front of his bathrobe in maybe ten seconds flat, but Steve's moving, getting one leg either side of him the way James did yesterday.

Except somehow he's doing it without putting any weight on James at all which...James is going to put down to talent and the serum.

“Vibrators, nipple clamps,” he says, hovering over James, “you tell me when I'm getting close. Maybe you like a man in uniform. Or I could get you up against the window.”

James' eyes flutter closed and, when he looks down between them...yeah, that's his dick.

“Hey,” Steve says, and James opens his eyes, looks up at him. Steve kisses him. “I'll try almost anything once. All you gotta do is ask.”

~

Steve strokes him off with the soft, plush fabric of the bathrobe, moves it aside to avoid staining it when James comes, and then cleans him up with a warm, damp cloth he fetches from the kitchen.

James just lies in the recliner, swathed in bathrobe but still bared completely, until Rogers takes off his own shirt and folds it over the arm of the other couch. He takes his jeans off next, and folds those too, and then he stands in front of James in just his tags and boxers and holds out his hands.

James frowns but takes them, and then Steve pulls him up onto his feet, turns them around to sit down and take his place, and holds out his hands again.

Ohh, yep, James is totally up for snuggling.

He lets Steve guide him down, lets Steve manhandle him until he's basically in Steve's lap, and then Steve's rubbing his back in long, smooth strokes, talking quietly enough that it's only on James' periphery, and he thinks about everything this means for him.

“You said you'd talk to Stark, didn't you?” he says.

Steve chuckles.

“Yeah, don't fret about that.”

~

The next time they move, it's when James decides he needs the bathroom, and Steve stops him momentarily, grabs his hand as he turns away.

“There's a lot to do in the tower,” he says. “I mean, y'know. It has restaurants and a gym but apart from that...”

James groans even as he says it.

“I could take you to the residential pool,” he says. “It's just us usually, and higher level staff, but friends are welcome. Or there are gardens.”

“There are _gardens_?” James says, and Steve contemplates it for a minute.

“There are greenhouse areas with holo ceilings,” he says. “There's a bunch of stuff you haven't seen that I never use, but I know it's there.”

“If I go swimming now, I'm gonna sink,” James says, and Steve smiles.

“It's up to you,” he says. “I can ask Jarvis to put on the planetarium-”

“Jarvis can make a planetarium?” James says, and his voice is monotone in a way that suggests he's trying very hard not to display emotion.

Steve just watches him for a moment, and then he chuckles softly.

“That's a yes?”

“I'm a space nerd,” James tells him, slightly too quickly, as though he's barely containing himself. “Sci-fi, NASA, all of that, I love it. If you're willing to put up a planetarium, I am totally willing to sit here and watch. Maybe forever.”

Steve nods.

“I think we can manage that,” he says. 

He follows James as far as the bedroom with his jeans and shirt in hand, to find something more suited to spending an afternoon on the couch. He finds his soft clothes – they were advertised as pajamas but Steve has a different set of pajamas – and collects the ones he's had brought up for James, giving them to him once he's out of the bathroom.

“How'd you know my size?” he asks, and Steve shakes his head. 

“I didn't,” he says. “Jarvis runs everything, the dry-cleaning facilities included. I asked him to bring them up for you with your clothes.”

James raises an eyebrow but doesn't seem concerned, and so Steve grabs a blanket while James is changing and shoves the coffee table out of the way to take all the couch cushions off and dump them on the floor.

James beams when he comes in.

“Ooh, slumber party?” he says.

Steve laughs a little.

“Come lie down with me,” he says, and they settle under the blanket on the couch cushions on the floor.

James moves up against him immediately and, pleasantly surprised, Steve lifts his arm so he can fit himself closer. Then, when they're both comfortable, he says,

“Jarvis, could you please blackout the windows and play the something from the space collection? Maybe the aurora timelapse to start with?”

Before he's even finished speaking, the windows turn opaque.

 _“Of course, Sir,”_ Jarvis answers, and as Steve says,

“Thank you,” 

light and colour in a thousand tiny points springs to life above them, twisting swathes of green and pink winding through.

_“You're welcome, Sir.”_

Steve is still blown away by it, if he's honest with himself. It's like stepping out of his apartment and into a snow-globe, like lying in polar snow without needing a parka. It looks so real even though it's just projected, and he never fails to enjoy it.

“Wow,” James breathes, as they watch, the milky way begin its ascent over by the kitchen. Steve finds himself watching the dappled colors on James' skin, reflected in his eyes.

“This is amazing,” James says. “You could turn the temperature down and sit here in a blanket, like, full immersion.”

Steve thinks about it. It wouldn't be so difficult – he could give James some actual casual clothes to hang around in. They could drag in a couple of duvets, maybe sleeping bags.

He could make hot chocolate when they're done. 

One day, maybe.

The cold wouldn't be so bad, he thinks, with someone here to share it.

***

The rest of the day passes too quickly, and they eat dinner together talking about all the things they haven't needed to talk about.

James has a sister, and his parents live in Hell's Kitchen. He finished college when other kids were just starting, and he likes Netflix, reading, gaming and not being out of shape, to name a few things.

He likes coffee sweet and tea iced, he doesn't like OJ and he can't stand eggplant. 

He's sort of religious – his parents are but he's not as convinced – and he thinks more needs to be done towards gaining proper equality. He also really hates gossip magazines. If he and Steve ever get far enough for him to appear in one, the whole world had probably better watch out.

He can talk for hours about his projects but has to be coaxed to do so, and he loves working for Tony Stark.

All in all, James seems like a really great kid.

“Are my clothes in the bedroom?” he says as Steve is making him hot chocolate.

“Ah, they're,” Steve says, but he turns to look at James. “Okay so, yeah, _but_ I wasn't sure if you'd wanna walk-of-shame it if anyone happens to notice, so there's a different...you know, shirt...sweater thing in your size with it all. You can wear it to work tomorrow.”

James kind of gapes at him for a second.

“Right,” he says. “I've got work tomorrow.”

Steve chuckles.

“Don't worry about it now,” he says. “We've still got the rest of the evening.”

But they spend it mainly in silence, happy in each others' company. When they're done with hot chocolate that Steve makes anyway, Steve folds them both onto the couch, tangling them together where they neck until James is a bit of a mess, and then Rogers finishes him off with a sure hand and gentle words, mouthing at his skin while he tells James how beautiful he is, cradling James' whole body with his own.

They go to bed back in the living room on the couch cushions and bed pillows, safe in the warmth of Steve's apartment, arms around each other as they sleep under a polar sky.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “God, I had an amazing time,” he murmurs against Steve's lips, and Steve's hands are huge on his ass, hauling him close. “I don't want to leave and I can't wait to see you.”
> 
> Steve smiles against his lips.
> 
> “I know,” he says, “me either. God, you're so sexy,” but he lets go of James a moment later, both of them well-aware that James will never get to work on time if they continue this now. “Come on,” Steve says, swats James on the ass as the elevator doors open, and he skitters inside.
> 
> “I,” he says, but can't think of anything else to say that hasn't been said.
> 
>  _I want you,_ he thinks, _I'll miss you,_ and then, unbidden, he hears another three words at the back of his mind and all the air leaves him in a rush.

James wakes at seven-thirty to a gentle chiming sound, and light floods the room even as he opens his eyes.

The cushions next to him are empty and he smells food before he realizes why that must be.

Steve, who must have been cooking with only the light of the kitchen appliances by the look of things, has made James a fried breakfast, which is ridiculous not only because this is Monday morning but also because, if James continues to let Steve feed him this way, he's going to need a whole new workout routine.

“Good morning,” Steve says, with the type of good humor that really doesn't suit either a Monday or a morning, especially not a Monday on which James has to get out of Steve Rogers' bed and go to work.

“Mmm, hi,” James says, sitting up to rub his eyes. “Time is it?” 

Steve tells him, and James nods, yawning. He'd be late on any other day, but his job is only a few floors down on this occasion, so he tries to tamp down the irrational urge to panic and rush. When he gets a good look at Steve, Steve's cooking at the stove, wearing a white tee and knee-length navy shorts.

“Oh my God,” James says. “What time do you go running?”

“Anywhere between four-thirty and six, usually,” Steve answers, and James shudders to even consider it.

“Your clothes are in the bedroom, along with that...thing I mentioned. I wasn't sure how it'd fit what you were wearing on Friday but it's in there. Plus your underwear and your socks. You've got that toothbrush and you can use the, uh, razor...shower, et cetera, am I forgetting anything you need?”

James sits up on the floor-bed and looks at Steve, watches his back until he turns around to look.

“You're doing a lot for me,” he says.

“Nah,” Steve answers. “I've been up for hours. Come on, shit, shave, shower and shine, kiddo, time to...uh...” He turns around and looks a little uncomfortable. “Sorry, that's an army thing,” he says.

James snorts, pushes the covers back and stretches as he stands. 

“S'ok,” he answers. “Apart from the shine thing, I probably will.” 

Steve laughs, too, watching him for a couple of seconds, and then he says,

“Actually, the...” and here he looks even more uncomfortable. “The shining's done. That's...” he shrugs. “That's also an army thing.”

Steve goes back to the breakfast, but James walks over to him instead, feeling halfway between bold and hopeful, and then he slides his arms around Steve's waist and buries his face between Steve's shoulders.

“Thank you,” he says.

Immediately, one of Steve's huge hands comes down to hold his wrist.

“You all right?” he asks, and his voice is low and honey-sweet, humming through his body and into James'.

“Mmm,” James says, “morning.”

Steve chuckles softly.

“Morning,” he says, and then James lets go and sets about starting his morning routine.

~

They eat breakfast together, mainly quietly, and it's nice to just be doing so with somebody else. Steve keeps looking at him and smiling, and James keeps blushing about it.

When it's maybe a quarter to nine, James starts gathering all his things (not that there are many) and shoving them into his bag.

He puts on his new cardigan – thick knit, button up with a stand collar, in Commander-Rogers-Navy-Blue – and beams.

“You like?” Steve asks, and James nods.

“I love,” he says. 

He looks around, runs his mental inventory, and sighs as he slaps his hands down on his thighs. It's...going to be difficult to leave, actually. He wants to stay here forever and do nothing but exactly what they've done non-stop over the weekend.

“I should go,” he says.

“Me too,” Steve tells him. “I'm gonna finish up here and head back to my apartment after I talk to Tony.”

He fetches a brown paper bag as James pulls his bag on, and then gives it to James. James looks inside, bemused, and finds what looks like two tupperware boxes and a thermos.

“Oh my God, you packed me lunch?” he says, and Steve smiles, leans down and kisses him.

“Least I can do for a workin' man, ain't it?” he says, but he palms James' ass halfway through the kiss so it's a little less than innocent. “Go on, hop to it.”

But James pauses as he walks away, turning back with a massive grin.

“Can you believe it?” he says. “I'm dating Steve Rogers!”

Steve snorts.

“Well at least you didn't tell me you're dating Captain America.”

“Pfft, you're way cuter than Wilson.”

Steve's mouth falls open and his eyebrows shoot up.

“Oh, I like you,” he says. “I think I might keep you.”

James beams, and they get all the way to the elevator before he pauses and comes back for another kiss.

“God, I had an amazing time,” he murmurs against Steve's lips, and Steve's hands are huge on his ass, hauling him close. “I don't want to leave and I can't wait to see you.”

Steve smiles against his lips.

“I know,” he says, “me either. God, you're so sexy,” but he lets go of James a moment later, both of them well-aware that James will never get to work on time if they continue this now. “Come on,” Steve says, swats James on the ass as the elevator doors open, and he skitters inside.

“I,” he says, but can't think of anything else to say that hasn't been said.

 _I want you,_ he thinks, _I'll miss you,_ and then, unbidden, he hears another three words at the back of his mind and all the air leaves him in a rush.

“I'll text you,” Steve says instead, and James just nods mutely, still kind of in shock that Steve called him 'sexy' as the elevator doors close. “See you Friday.”

And then James is by himself in an elevator and heading downstairs to his Monday to Friday job at Stark Industries, fighting the irrational urge to panic or cry or something.

This is so stupid – he's got a packed lunch from Steve Rogers. Why is this happening now?

But James already knows the answer – he's just had the best weekend of his life and even though he knows it's only until next week, he really didn't want to leave.

He'll put it out of his head once he logs in, he'll be all right, of course he will but, before he steps off the elevator, he yanks his phone out of his pocket.

 _Miss you already,_ he types, and hits send without a second thought.

***

**James.**

The first thing James does is log in, and then he goes to grab coffee from the machine in the corner. Okay, Steve's packed him a flask in his lunch bag (Steve Rogers packed him a lunch bag!!) but he wants to save it for lunch.

He plans to head down to one of the quiet areas and maybe get started on a new book or something when it's time for lunch, and he comes back to his desk to find Amy logging in, too.

“James,” she says, and he grins.

“Ames.”

And then they start giggling.

He's glad for Amy – they work well together.

James' current project is an adaptation of the old retro-reflective panel designs – a hybrid of reflective and cloaking technologies that they're currently trying to apply to accurate projection.

Basically, James is trying to make it so that people who need to hide something can hide something. James' team is hoping to be able to cover anything up to five kilometers with a maximum of five projectors – one for each corner, and one on the roof, for example.

Stark has been clear about the purposes, too – it's not a military development. While it's likely (as with most other things) the military will get their hands on it eventually, SI are working to hide hospitals and refugee camps in warzones on the large scale, with a method that can be implemented without having to cover the entire hospital in electronic panels.

James' _side_ project, however, which he and Amy are working on and have been sworn to silence about, is the retroreflective cloaking projection system on a miniaturized scale. ReCProSys is working – that's the most exciting thing about it. The ReCProSys team are succeeding, test runs are soon, and the whole project is going amazingly well.

But if you could strap it to your wrist or cast it over people who need it at a moment's notice? That would not only be amazingly useful to civilians in combatant crossfire (like an alien invasion, for example), but it would be amazingly useful to the people in charge of protecting them. Which...yeah, that's Avenger tech. 

James' whole family was background-checked before he was allowed on this one, and he works with his computer under a second screen. It's really weird – like trippy almost – because if James stands up from his desk, his computer screen shows something completely different than it did when he sat down. And, if he bends to get something from his bag, it's the same.

That, though, is to do with directional polarization and lenticular lensing on the screen cover. Plus he's got what the R&D team affectionately refer to as “blinkers” - two polymer blades make sure that nobody can get close enough to see what James is doing from the side. 

There's even a proximity alarm if he hasn't locked his workstation when he leaves it – three in a fortnight and he gets a talking-to from his head of department. (He's never left it unlocked once.)

The work on James' workstation – like everyone else's at SI in R&D who are working on digital components – is invisible from any further away than James actually is. 

It's pretty fucking cool.

It's all alterable, of course. James has the passcode for his workstation, so that the building – so that Jarvis, actually – can withdraw the safety measures and allow senior staff to view his progress. If Tony Stark comes in, for example, James can make it so that he doesn't have to bend double and put his chin on James' shoulder just to see what's going on. And, if Amy's got a problem with her coding, she can key in her passcode and let James see so he can help.

The workstations are all monitored internally and externally – which isn't true for all Stark Industries employees, but is true for all the ones in R&D – so James has a webcam facing him, which is probably wirelessly connected to Jarvis, and a remote monitoring program sending everything he's doing, again probably wirelessly, to some server somewhere. 

James assumed, when he started working for SI, that there must be some sort of algorithm to make sure he wasn't on Facebook or something, but it turns out that Stark Industries literally doesn't care what he does with his work day as long as it's nothing explicit, illegal or in breach of security and contract, and as long as he gets his work done.

So he can spend five minutes on Facebook here and there, buy that thing from Amazon he just remembered, and tweet about his favourite bakery if he wants. Because SI know that he's good at what he does, and that he's not going to be stupid about the trust that they've put in him.

There are things in James' contract which are grounds for immediate dismissal – corporate espionage, for example, or getting drunk and tweeting about what he's working on. Watching porn's another one but, to be perfectly honest? It's all the dumb shit. James isn't allowed to plug in an external device to his workstation, because he could be downloading shit. He _is_ allowed, however, to synch his phone wirelessly via another induction pad, so that he can listen to his music through the bluetooth SI earbuds that _SI provides!_

James' job is pretty fucking sweet, and he has it because he's good at it – SI has a new recruit initiative that pulls candidates from places all over the country if they're good enough and willing. James was wrapping up his time at Cornell when he got his call, and like he was ever gonna pass it up, they offered him a salary incentive, too.

So James can afford to live in Brooklyn, and he's working on technology that might someday save hundreds of lives – including the lives of certain colorful First Responders – and he gets to listen to music and surf Facebook while he's doing it, and then go slouch in beanbags on fake grass where there's arcade machines and fountains.

Working for Google might be good – working for Stark Industries is the best.

There isn't a slide to get from his floor to the lobby _but_ there is a central emergency evacuation system if the standard evacuation is compromised. Because this is also Avengers Tower, which makes it a pretty big target. 

It's called the CES, which stands for Central Evacuation System. The tower personnel and senior staff run simulation evacuation drills in a separate part of the tower once a month, so as not to upset the original system. Apparently, and James hasn't experienced this first-hand although there are some on this floor who have, the whole thing is automated. 

James wonders, considering that it must be run by Jarvis, if it can truly be considered automated. 

It's a question he might ask Steve – Steve seems like the kind of guy who might have asked that kind of question before.

~

James has been working for a while when he tries his simulation a third time. One was a massive failure, which he tweaked. Two wasn't quite as big of a failure. But watching it now, he's grasping at straws. He sits back and sighs.

“What's wrong?” Amy says, and he spares her a glance as his eyes unfocus. 

There's an issue with the projection field that keeps cropping up, and he's done his troubleshooting, he's run his simulations, he's been over his calculations and that, unfortunately, only means one thing.

“Pretty sure my issue's a bug in the code.”

Amy makes a face.

“Ouch,” she says.

Ouch is an understatement. There are two hundred lines of code in a game of minesweeper. The ReCProSys is a lot more complicated than a game of minesweeper. Still, it's a Monday. So he could definitely be at this all week.

He checks the time. It's coming up on eleven.

“I'm taking a shake-break,” he says, and Amy nods as he locks his station and stands.

“Good plan, Batman,” she says, and locks hers too. 

Oh yeah, James works at a company with a milkshake bar.

He gets a small, because he has lunch today and this is more a distraction than a nutritional topup. He also gets mint caramel because fuck his arteries today – he's got thousands of lines of code to look through.

~

His lunch, when he makes it to lunch, is amazing.

James likes pasta salad, but this is pasta salad with pulled ham, fresh passata and basil, with what might be feta on top and what is definitely marscapone stirred in. It's simple, but it's filling, and it's fresh and it wakes him up a good amount. 

He almost doesn't have room for-

“Oh my god,” he says, and Amy's eyes go wide. 

“Is that a cronut,” she says, and it's not a question because hell yeah it's a cronut!

“Want some?” James says, and she flounders but he hands over like half because, honestly, calories.

He doesn't need them as much as she does. She's been teaching him Chinese every lunch break for the past six months, and she has a milkshake and a breakfast wrap every day and still looks like a stiff breeze would knock her over.

They eat the cronut and he's halfway through when she says,

“How did you even get one of these?”

And James bites his lip as he thinks about it.

Steve's briefed him on how to speak to his family but not on what to say to his friends and colleagues, and he can't take it back if he tells the wrong person.

“I know a guy,” he says, in a vain attempt to put her off.

“Well tell him thanks,” she says and oh, okay.

That was....a lot easier than he thought.

When they're done eating, Amy plays on Tetris for a while (she's the top score and two of the others in the top five. James will beat her one day) and he starts on his book on his tablet, setting a silent alarm that'll pop up and tell him when it's time to get back to work.

He's only a paragraph in before his thoughts wander and he finds that, although the whole weekend might play itself out in vivid detail when he's got a little more privacy and time to himself, what he remembers most is the way Rogers greeted him each morning – once with his fingers in James' hair, once with a not-quite double-take, and once with a full cooked breakfast. He remembers burying his face between Rogers' shoulder blades, remembers the short, prickly hair left over from Portugal, and picks up his phone because he's got no reason not to.

 

................................ _Miss you already_   
................................ 8.53   
_Tell me about it_   
8.53   
................................ _Lunch was amazing_  
................................ 13.02

 

And he knows Steve is busy – Steve told him as much. He doesn't really expect that Steve will see the message until at least this evening, but his phone buzzes in his pocket not five minutes later.

 

................................ _Lunch was amazing_   
................................ 13.02   
_Shame you don't have time to_  
_come up and get dessert_  
13.05

 

James blushes immediately, feels a familiar tingle in the length of his dick in his pants, and starts thinking about code lines before he trusts himself to continue.

 

_Shame you don't have time to_   
_come up and get dessert_   
13.05   
................................ _I could come up for dessert_  
................................ _after work tonight._  
................................ 13.05

 

Really, he's half kidding, but there's part of him that's monumentally disappointed when the answer comes back

 

................................ _I could come up for dessert_   
................................ _after work tonight._   
................................ 13.05   
_I can't – I have people coming_  
_over tonight._  
13.07

 

But then another message, and James thinks his heart'll beat fast enough to burst.

 

_I can't – I have people coming_   
_over tonight._   
13.07   
_But I want to._  
13.07

 

James wants him, so badly, and there isn't time to go up and see him. He might not even still be in the tower, for that matter. And if he's got people coming over, James won't get in the way of that, but it's such a temptation.

He thinks about the ways he could do it – leave now and claim an emergency, pretend he's sick, just head straight up (if Jarvis would let him) – but he wouldn't do it. He's more responsible than that, for a start, but the thought is appealing.

Would Steve make it fast to try and get him back to work without much of a delay, or would he take his time and help James maintain the lie? Would he be delighted at the surprise or...James wets his lips. Maybe he'd take a different route for that kind of irresponsibility, and that's something to think about late at night when he's by himself. And _maaaaaybe_ talk about Steve with later on in the week. 

 

_I can't – I have people coming_   
_over tonight._   
13.07   
_But I want to._   
13.07   
_Can I call you tonight?_  
13.07

 

James can't help the grin he gives the phone or the heat in his face.

 

_But I want to._   
13.07   
_Can I call you tonight?_   
13.07   
................................ _Text me when x_  
................................ 13.08

 

James then has to get up and get back to work, but that's just fine. He's got something to work towards besides line after line after line, now.

~

He says goodnight to Amy and takes the subway home, and it feels like it takes a million times longer than usual. He listens to music, but his favorite band haven't been the same since their second album in '23 and they're harder to listen to every time. 

He switches to old movie soundtracks but all that makes him want to do is get up and pretend to duck flying debris and lasers. He reminds himself that he's twenty-one with a Cornell education and a highly paid SI internship. 

When he gets back, however, he's decided to bite the bullet. No good's going to come of keeping this stuff to himself, and he definitely doesn't want to tell his parents, so he does the next best thing.

He calls his sister, and tells her not to.

 _“What's up?”_ she says as she answers, and he smiles, looks up at the ceiling.

“So,” he says, “I need to tell you something, okay? Like I've _got_ to tell someone and you're the only person I know.”

 _“Ooooh,”_ she answers. _“Gimme the gossip, bitch, spill that tea.”_

James blinks.

“Wow,” he says. “If you ever say those things to me again, I'm disowning you.”

 _“Spill, dickbreath!”_ she answers and, yeah, okay.

“I have a boyfriend.”

There is a silence that runs much too long for James' liking, and then she says, 

_“Seriously?”_

“Thanks?” he answers, and he goes over to the refrigerator to see what he's got to hand. Some of his stuff has gone off, and he chucks it – disadvantage of being out all weekend – but his milk still smells okay. Ish. It'll be fine with coffee and sugar, he's sure. “Yeah. I got a boyfriend and he's _seriously_ cute.”

 _“Uh, okay,”_ she says. _“How cute are we talking, though, like, Grayson Russell cute, Chace Crawford cute or like Thor cute?”_

“I mean,” James says, “are we talking about my hot new boyfriend or your terrible taste in men?”

She snorts.

_“Your taste in men is-”_

“Thor cute,” James says. 

_“-not as bad as I thought?”_ she amends, and James laughs.

“Like, he's like Thor cute. Muscles, blonde, blue eyes, really tall, really strong jaw, you know?”

 _“Are you sure you're not actually dating Thor?”_

“I promise,” James says. “But actually, speaking of celebrities...”

He can hear her interest winding up.

 _“Oh my god?”_ she says.

“Yeah,” he answers.

 _“Oh my God?”_ she says again, and he laughs a little apologetically.

“Yep.”

_“Oh my god, if you don't tell me right now- James, are you dating a celebrity?”_

He has to stifle his snickers, actually, because it's really difficult not to laugh at the pitch her voice has reached.

“I'm dating a celebrity,” and she makes a weird kind of screeching noise, “but I signed a non-disclosure agreement until we've been dating a while.”

_“That is sooo weird, that's not like, James, that's weird, though.”_

“I agreed to it,” he says. “It's fine, it's just so that I can't run to the papers with a dick pic. You know? Or, I can, but I can't tell anyone whose it is.”

_“Oh my god do you have a picture of his dick?”_

“No!”

She blows a raspberry at him down the telephone and he sets about making coffee.

“Even if I did, I wouldn't send it, that'd be weird. Would you want me to send him a picture of your boobs?”

_“I mean, he's Thor-cute. Why wouldn't I?”_

James groans.

_“Help a sister out, bro, is he into girls?”_

James thinks about this as he puts the pot on, and goes back to the freezer to look for something he can cook fast.

“Actually, he might be. I think I remember him having a girlfriend.”

 _“Oh my god, James,_ James, _how famous is he, is he like an athlete or will I have actually heard of him?”_

James snorts.

“Yeah, pretty sure you know him.”

_“Oh my god, is he like an actor? Or a singer?”_

Ooh, mac'n'cheese, that'll do – and he figures he might as well throw her off.

“He's not a singer,” he says, and she gasps loudly enough that she nearly chokes.

 _“You're dating an actor?!”_ she shrieks, and then it's shrieked again a little more quietly as she, presumably, leans away to yell it again and then, when she comes back, her voice is low and urgent, _“James Buchanan Barnes you tell me this instant do I know this man, have I seen him, is he cute, James, is he good in bed?”_

He waits, makes her wait for it, draws it out for a long few seconds and then says.

“Yes on everything,” and listens to her have another squealing fit.

When she's done, she's out of breath, and he hears a _flumph_ that suggests she's just thrown herself at her couch..

 _“Is he treating you right?”_ she asks, and James smiles, thinks of strong hands and sparkling eyes, of good food and soft conversation.

“Yeah,” he says.

~

The mac and cheese gets a little dark and crisp on top but like it's mac and cheese so who even cares? He reads while he's eating, so he doesn't finish until maybe seven, and then he has an apple for dessert and gets himself another coffee. He puts a little cocoa in it, and then he minimizes his book on his tablet and plays a few (read a lot) rounds of stupid, colorful games that don't involve any reading or calculations instead.

He stitches up a hole in one of his socks, that's been drying in the bathroom.

He finds that chocolate bar he knew he had.

He gets another coffee and watches videos on YouTube, sends a link or two to Becca on the IM program they use. He somehow gets from true crime to AFV compilations, and he looks at the clock around the time he realizes.

It's getting on for ten at night, and he's only going to want to be up for another hour or so. He looks at his phone. 

He needs to shower, so he hauls himself up off the couch and locks up for the night. 

He showers efficiently and considers jerking off but, actually, he's okay without for the time being. Maybe later, once he's in bed, but he doesn't feel much like doing it in a bathroom that could be warmer under a shower that could be stronger. 

When he gets out, he towels what moisture he can out of his hair and then puts on his pajamas and wears his hoodie over the top. He sets his alarms and puts his phone on to charge, and then he gets into bed with the remnants of his homemade mocha and the rest of his colorful games. 

He's not tired, not by any means, but he's doing his best not to think about that _Can I call you?_

In fact, he's so busy trying not to think about it that he nearly jumps out of his skin when his phone buzzes maybe five minutes later. 

 

_Still awake?_

 

James is typing a reply when the phone rings in his hand, and he laughs delightedly as he accepts the call.

 

Before he can even open his mouth to speak, Steve's rich, warm voice sends a shiver down James' spine.

 _“Hey, sweetheart,”_ Steve says. _“How was your day?”_

And James sinks into his pillows as he closes his eyes and bites his lip. 

_'About to get a whole lot better,'_ he thinks.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I met one of your R&D employees in the coffee bar a couple weeks ago and we hit it off. Any objections if I ask them on a date?”
> 
> Tony spins on his heel and looks at Steve, eyebrows raised.
> 
> “Gettin' back on that ole' horse there, Rogers?” he says, and Steve gives him as unimpressed a look as he can.
> 
> “Thanks,” he says. “I needed the reminder. Yes or no?”
> 
> Tony looks inordinately pleased.
> 
> “Impatient, aren't we?” he says.

“I'll text you,” Steve says, and James nods, looking a little dazed. “See you Friday.”

And then the doors close between them and James is gone. Steve feels oddly as though something's missing as soon as James is out of sight. He knows where James is, knows where James is going – even knows where James lives. But he knows if he turns his head, James won't be in his periphery, and that's...less than ideal.

He's still standing by the doors when his phone buzzes in his pockets.

 _Miss you already,_ it reads, and he smiles.

 _Tell me about it,_ he answers, but he's got stuff to get done today, and he may as well start now.

***

**Steve.**

Once Steve's finished packing up the couch cushions and washing up, he goes through his usual garbage-truck routine with the refrigerator and then strips the bed again.

“Jarvis,” he says, “is there a time today when I can catch Tony for five minutes?”

“ _I believe Mr Stark will be available this afternoon, after a board-meeting, at approximately midday on the twenty-second floor, conference room 'D.' Would you like me to request the adjustment to his schedule accordingly?”_

“Yes please, Jarvis,” Steve says, and Jarvis obliges, makes the necessary change. “I just want to ask him something.”

And then, because it's been playing on his mind a little,

“Jarvis, am I going to get to speak to Tony about James first, or do you have to inform him?”

Steve knows that Jarvis is constantly on standby regarding things like emergency assistance. Jarvis doesn't actively listen in the bathroom or the bedroom until Steve addresses him, and then stops actively listening when the conversation is finished. It's a little unpleasant to Steve still that the actual surveillance system is running twenty-four/seven, but it's stored somewhere completely inaccessible to anyone but Tony, and only available to Tony following the compliance of several situations and protocols. 

But Steve doesn't know if there's a subroutine for fraternization or something.

_“I am not required to inform Mr Stark of any activity conducted within the walls of the tower unless said activity has the potential to cause harm to the tower's occupants. Emergency surveillance protocols have not been triggered, nor is there any current security issue with your activities during the past few days. Should you wish to discuss these activities with Mr Stark, you will be able to do so without my prior interference.”_

Steve nods.

“Thank you, Jarvis,” he says. “Would you be able to keep the name from him if he asks?”

 _“I would not,_ ” Jarvis answers, _“But I would first be able to advise against his question, and inform him that you had asked for my discretion.”_

Steve thinks about that, but not for long. He's out, he's going to want people to meet James eventually, probably, if they get that far, but that's pretty good as far as he can hope for.

“Thank you,” he says.

 _“You are most welcome, Commander,”_ Jarvis answers.

To kill time, he heads down to the gym, and he finds Scott and Hope there, as well as Clint.

“Hey, Barton,” he says, sketching the sort of loose salute that says hello in ASL just in case he isn't wearing his hearing aids. 

Clint, running on one of the treadmills, evidently _isn't_ wearing his hearing aids, because he acknowledges with the skyward-pointing index fingers, and then thumb from forehead to chest, that make up his identifier for Steve – 'STAR,' 'MAN.' 

Everybody else calls him Winghead more often than not, these days, but Clint was not only the first to assign a permanent nickname while everyone else was still calling him Gramps, but 'wing' takes longer to sign than 'star.' It's also easier to sign 'star' in a close environment which, on the few occasions they've needed to communicate silently in emergencies, has been a literal life saver.

Plus, Clint likes the Bowie reference.

 _'You, here?'_ he signs, and Steve takes the other treadmill and starts his second run of the day while Scott and Hope spar on the mats. 

Steve puts his fingertip to the side of his nose, twists.

 _'Bored.'_ And then he points. _'You?'_

 _'I live here?'_ Clint says, and Steve laughs.

He signs 'Spider' to ask after Nat, and Clint shakes his head.

_'Later. Problem?'_

He shakes his head, signs, 

_'Need to talk when you are both empty.'_

And Clint looks nonplussed for a second, until his expression clears and he signs,

 _'Available?'_ instead.

Steve winces.

_'Sorry. Yes.'_

Clint nods.

“Just talk?” he says out loud.

Steve nods.

“I'll come up to yours later – that okay?”

Steve signs another _'yes'_ and then concentrates on his running.

It's a nice day and he doesn't mind exercising off the breakfast he's eaten and the refrigerator he's emptied again.

All he's really got to do is keep an eye on the time.

~

When he's done at the gym, he grabs a coffee from the coffee place and goes back upstairs and changes into his uniform. He'll only be wearing it for maybe twenty minutes anyhow, but it makes a better impression on the people who'll be filing past Tony on their way out of the conference room anyway.

He also grabs a standard yellow, hexagonal writing pencil with a pink eraser, and tucks it into his pocket. 

Then he goes down to floor twenty-two with the coffee.

Tony's meetings mainly finish on time these days – mainly because they're shorter and better managed. Which is what you get when Pepper's in charge.

So when the occupants file past Steve one by one, with a couple of them pausing to shake his hand and one Lieutenant Colonel who salutes Steve so crisply Steve's worried he might have accidentally performed brain surgery on himself.

“At ease,” he says, and the guy beams, shakes his hand.

It used to grate on him, once upon a time. Now it's just nice to be shown the respect – Commander is not a US Army designation. He's had it pointed out a few times, actually – technically, it's Navy. But technically, Steve's a qualified SEAL as well as one hell of a lot of other things and technically the rank that he ought to have been given doesn't apply and technically the only rank they can give him is one that's an approximate representation of achievements. He hasn't been army in years, really – it's a mark of respect. Nat said 'Commander' is sexier than 'Colonel,' of course, but that's got nothing to do with it. 

Tony looks about as amused by it as he always does as he saunters out of the conference room.

“And what have I done now?” he says.

Steve scoffs, holds out the pencil.

“Thanks for the loaner,” he says, and Tony looks at it like he's not sure what it does.

“Lies,” he says. 

He doesn't use pencils because he can draw with light in thin air, and has never really understood why Steve would do any different.

“Yeah,” Steve acknowledges. “But I did bring you coffee.”

He holds up the cup and Tony's eyes widen slightly. Tony will only drink an Iron Man. In that he rebranded a double-espresso with cream and one sugar an 'Iron Man' years ago, and made sure every coffee place in the tower sells it under that name. They've all got one, although Steve doesn't remember what most of them are. His is an iced coffee, black, because Tony isn't as funny as he thinks he is.

“I'll forgive you,” he says. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Steve bites the bullet because it's better than beating around the bush.

“I met one of your R&D employees in the coffee bar a couple weeks ago and we hit it off. Any objections if I ask them on a date?”

Tony spins on his heel and looks at Steve, eyebrows raised.

“Gettin' back on that ole' horse there, Rogers?” he says, and Steve gives him as unimpressed a look as he can.

“Thanks,” he says. “I needed the reminder. Yes or no?”

Tony looks inordinately pleased.

“Impatient, aren't we?” he says. “You must really want-”

“To-ny,” Steve sing-songs. “I brought you an Iron Maaan...”

Now it's Tony's turn to look unimpressed. He stares for a long few moments and then explodes into movement, as per usual.

“Fine,” he says. “Jarvis, we don't have any rules against that, do we?”

 _“Stark Industries allows relationships between personnel,”_ he answers, and Tony nods.

“You heard him, Blue.”

Steve raises an eyebrow but smiles anyway.

“Thanks, Tony,” he says.

He turns around and walks away, trying to pick up the pace a little before-

“Hey, Steve?” Tony calls after him, and he rolls his eyes before he turns back.

“Yeah?” 

Tony regards him.

“Which one?” 

Steve narrows his eyes as he thinks about it.

“Honestly? I'd rather not say just yet,” he says. “Let me see how well it goes for a while, alright?”

Tony regards him a moment longer but then shrugs elaborately. 

“Fine,” he says and then, as Steve rounds the corner to get to the elevator bank, he hears Tony yell, “I wasn't interested anyway!” and smiles.

***

His phone vibrates at one in the afternoon, and he sees a message from Clint about showing up on his floor at six-thirty, and another message from James.

 

_Miss you already_   
8.53   
................................ _Tell me about it_   
................................ 8.53   
_Lunch was amazing_  
13.02

 

Steve smiles down at his phone. The advantage to being up before James was that he had time to cook and, although he didn't make anything extravagant, he did make it with mainly fresh ingredients. Certainly, at least, he knows what ingredients he put in, and even though it's just ham and tomato pasta salad, he seasoned it well, cooked it properly, and it was made fresh this morning.

 

_Lunch was amazing_   
13.02   
................................ _Shame you don't have time to_  
................................ _come up and get dessert_  
................................ 13.05

 

And he's three minutes late replying, and James was on his lunch break, so he doesn't expect to receive a reply.

 

................................ _Shame you don't have time to_   
................................ _come up and get dessert_   
................................ 13.05   
_I could come up for dessert_  
_after work tonight_.  
13.05

 

And all of Steve' blood rushes downward. He could really go for that, actually – he could absolutely get behind that idea. He hasn't eaten James out yet and he's aching to try it some time soon – except that he knows now that Nat and Clint will be up in his apartment after work and, while he'd like everyone to meet James at some point if all goes well, tonight is not the night for it.

He's torn for a minute or two about who to decline, but he can think rationally even when his other-brain is trying to do it for him.

 

_I could come up for dessert_  
_after work tonight._  
13.05   
................................ _I can't – I have people coming_  
................................ _over tonight._  
................................ 13.07   
................................ _But I want to._  
................................ 13.07

 

It's not fair, he thinks. They're in the same building. They're literally minutes away from each other. But like hell is he jeopardizing what James has by messing him around during work hours.

 

................................ _I can't – I have people coming_   
................................ _over tonight._   
................................ 13.07   
................................ _But I want to._   
................................ 13.07   
................................ _Can I call you tonight?_  
................................ 13.07

 

And then he waits, unreasonably nervous about the answer considering they spent most of the weekend in varying states of undress, doing various different things to various different body parts. Steve's only spent a weekend having sex with the kid – he's faced down alien invasions before for God's sakes.

 

................................ _But I want to._   
................................ 13.07   
................................ _Can I call you tonight?_   
................................ 13.07   
_Text me when x_  
13.08

 

He smiles and files the information away in his head – as though he'd forget it somehow – and then tells Clint that six-thirty is fine.

~

By the time six-thirty rolls around, he's already ordered Mexican from Pipo's for him and Natasha, and pizza for Clint, all of which has arrived and all of which smells amazing. 

He wants to eat the entire thing, but he waits, like a good human being, until Nat and Clint arrive.

Their friendship is easier these days – it used to be a lot more tense back when they were younger and Natasha thought it funny to pick locks on rare occasions and just walk in unannounced. Clint, too, used to employ similar tactics, and Steve had put up with it for a while.

Then he didn't.

Their friendship recovered anyhow.

Nat has evidently not been on a mission – she's casually dressed with a short leather jacket that Clint takes off her shoulders and hangs on Steve's coathooks.

“Hey,” she says, and he leans down so she can kiss his cheek.

“Hi,” Clint says, holding up the beer he's brought, and Steve leans down for him as well.

“Good to see you guys,” he says. “It's been too long.”

Clint beams.

“What are we watchin'?” he says.

They even take off their shoes, because they know him well and care enough to make life a little easier for him.

“Anything you want after we talk,” Steve answers. 

“Uh-oh,” Natasha says. “Who's in trouble?”

“Nobody,” he says, almost an admonishment. “I wouldn't have waited.”

They sit down on his couches – Clint extends the recliner as soon as his ass hits the cushion, and Steve laughs – and then he passes out the food between them and starts unwrapping his.

“I wanted to tell you I'm dating,” he says. 

“Aw, man,” Clint says, but he's kidding. “Where'll I get my kicks now?”

Steve chuckles softly, grabs an enchilada and consumes a good portion in his first bite.

“That's great,” Natasha says, and Clint starts twisting caps off beers. “Good for you. Boy or girl?”

Steve manages eventually to swallow his mouthful, taking the proffered beer.

“Thanks,” he says. “Boy.”

Clint makes an interested noise.

“Is he cute?”

Steve laughs into his beer bottle.

“дурак ,” Natasha mutters. “What kind of question – Steve's dating him! He has to be cute, or they wouldn't match.”

“Aw, leave him alone,” Steve grins. “Yeah, he's cute. He's...I mean, cute ain't the word but he got it.”

“I am intrigued,” Clint tells him. “My interest is piqued, my attention has been caught, who _is this mysterious stranger_?”

Steve just gives him a look.

“He ain't a stranger,” he says. “I'm datin' him.”

“What did Tony say about this?” Nat asks, and Steve rubs the back of his neck.

“Well now, see, that's the other thing,” he says. “And that's...the other reason I wanted to talk. Tony hasn't run a background check for me _because_ -” 

He holds up a hand to cut Nat off before she starts on him about security.

“...he already works for SI. He's had his background checks run, he's a smart kid and he's clean security-wise as far as Jarvis can tell, which is-”

“Kid?” Clint says.

Steve rolls his eyes.

“Can you let me finish?” he says. “Yes, kid. He's genius level, he's very sweet, he doesn't do the oh-em-gee you're Captain America thing and he's-”

Oh. Yeah, maybe he shouldn't say that but he knows both of them have twigged already.

“Steve Rogers, you hussy,” Natasha says.

“Oh, knock it off,” he says, and takes another swig of beer. “His name is James and he's twenty-one, and I'm _telling_ you this because I trust the both of you to respect my privacy, and to believe me when I tell you that I know. Eveything you're thinking right now. I know.”

He looks at them and...yeah, he can see the worry there. It's good of them, he supposes. Even after years, they still keep his mental health in mind.

“I know,” he says again. 

“He's twenty-one?” Clint says.

“You're dating a kid called _James_?” Natasha adds.

Steve puts his beer on the coffee table.

“I invite you into my home, I buy you Mexican food and pizza, I tell you about my secret toyboy, and this is how you repay me?”

“You live in Brooklyn,” Natasha says.

“I know you know who you are,” Clint says, ignoring her. “But can you blame us for worrying a little?”

Steve looks at him.

“I _know_ ,” he says. “And all right, sure. His name is James. He's young and cute and his got dark hair and blue eyes. I'm not having a breakdown, I just have a type.”

There's a long silence.

“Have you told Sam?” Clint asks.

“No,” Steve says, “because I haven't been seeing the kid for long, and because I want to tell him face to face. Plus, I didn't want you guys thinking I was blowing you off out of...I don't know.”

“Misguided wallowing in your own misery?” Natasha says.

“Now that's what I mean,” Steve answers. “Of course you're entitled to worry about me. I _appreciate_ it. But that guy you're thinkin' of figured out how to ask for help and got therapy years ago, so can you maybe just trust me to make my own decisions for five minutes?”

Nat looks supremely unimpressed but Clint is starting to look conflicted.

“I'm not telling him secrets, it's not a midlife crisis, right now we're just having a good time together. We're having a _great_ time together.”

There's another long silence, and Steve looks at both of them. Nat doesn't seem convinced, but then one of the many things that's been a help to him in the past is that she takes no shit, and won't let Steve give her any either. If she thinks he's being bullheaded about something, being difficult or hard on himself or any of that awesome stuff, she's not afraid to tell him so. Which is great when she's right.

“I know the two of you care,” he says. “And I know that if I have any problems, you'll be first to tell me you told me so.”

Natasha cocks her head.

“But I _like_ him. He has qualities I like, and he likes making conversation and he thinks the fact that I spend a lot of time with him and like doing things for him is _nice_.”

This last he says with a look to Natasha, and she looks away. Clint does not, but that just tells him they've both heard. It's not them he's talking about, but they both know who it is.

“How long have you been seeing him?” Natasha asks, and Steve sits back and sighs up at the ceiling.

“You know?” he says. “I'm not gonna tell you, Nat. I'll let you know when we hit six months but it's...”

“You're telling us as a courtesy,” Clint says. “Which I appreciate.”

“Jesus, Clint, I'm _telling_ you because you're my friends-”

“I've heard of rebounds,” Natasha says, “but this is-”

“That's just unkind,” Steve says, and he makes sure to look at her when he says so. 

She holds his gaze for a few more seconds and then nods.

“You're right,” she says. “I'm sorry.”

He waits a few more seconds, but the tension dissipates a little, and he picks up his beer again. Clint sighs heavily and Steve realizes he must have been holding his breath.

“We worry,” she says.

“I know you do,” Steve says. “I told you; I know you worry because we're friends, and I appreciate it. But I'm forty-one years old. And it's not like my life experience is limited.”

Nat looks vaguely pained.

“I didn't ask you here for advice,” he says eventually. “Or approval. I asked you here to buy you takeout and tell you to get somebody else to spitroast.”

Clint snorts his beer out of his nose he laughs so suddenly.

~

When they leave, they've managed to get over most of the tension, and Steve gives the leftover pizza to Clint. There's no leftover Mexican. 

Natasha kisses his cheek again.

“ _No_ additional background checks,” he says. 

She rolls her eyes but nods.

Clint hugs Steve pretty tightly and says, “I'm sorry we didn't have time lately.”

Steve shakes his head.

“I'd started needing more anyway,” he says quietly, hand on Clint's face, thumb against his cheek. 

Clint just nods. Then he holds up the pizza box like it's some kind of prize just to make Steve laugh, and they bundle themselves into the elevator. Clint waves as the doors close.

And so Steve finishes up his usual checks, makes sure he hits the trash button on the way out, and leaves.

~

The ride to his apartment is fairly easy considering it's nearly ten on a Monday night, and Steve realizes that he's got no idea when James goes to bed. He doesn't break any limits, but he pushes a couple of ambers, and he locks the bike as he's already jogging inside, digging his phone out of his pocket s he goes.

_Text me when x_   
13.08   
................................ _Still awake?_

And he sees the three dots come up that tell him James must be typing a reply. So he hits call.

He winces as he brings the phone up to his ear – what if James was going to tell him he was busy?

But James picks up a moment later, chuckling about something, and something in Steve unwinds.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he says. “How was your day?”

And it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Spoiler alert:** If you'd like to know the dates in this series, here's [a link to a timeline](https://66.media.tumblr.com/aac4be76b217f7b6ea54592e0a76d168/tumblr_inline_pg5mcewTA21rckout_500.png) of the first ten parts, with a short summary of each part. **Spoilers for parts 1-10, though.**


End file.
